Chef-endorsed cooking products new booming business

Women lust after them. Men envy them. And we'd all like to own their saucepans.

Forget about Mick or Ozzy: Professional chefs are the new rock stars of our celebrity-obsessed culture.

Show up at any personal appearance for Emeril Lagasse and you'll be met by a bevy of breathless female fans, who will squeal at the mere sight of the guy who made "Bam!" his trademark.

Gaze at the boyish grin of Rocco DiSpirito and it's easy to see why he not only was named one of People magazine's "Sexiest Men Alive," but also landed his own reality-show gig, The Restaurant, which debuted on NBC on Sunday.

And if you can't take home the man, well, at least you can buy his oven mitts. Chef-endorsed products are a booming business, aided in no small part by the growing popularity of the Food Network, which is available in more than 79 million U.S. households. While Emeril and others are prohibited from actively endorsing products on their Food Network programs, information-hungry consumers do plenty of sleuthing to discern the brand of a whisk or the alloy of an omelet pan.

"We get calls all the time: `Which pan was Emeril using the other night?'" says Catherine Fischer, vice president of sales and marketing for All-Clad, the cookware company that partnered with Lagasse four years ago to produce Emerilware, a collection of about 50 cookware, bakeware and utensil products.

"The cooking shows we used to see were pretty dry, featuring dishes that were pretty complicated. Today, chefs like Emeril have brought a lot more fun into the kitchen, and they better understand both consumer eating habits and just how busy we all are."

Other chefs jumping into the fire include Daniel Boulud, who has partnered with the French manufacturer Sabatier to launch his DBK line of cookware and cutlery, which will be for sale in late August. Boulud, who recently opened his Café Boulud at the Brazilian Court in Palm Beach, applies a mix-and-match philosophy to differentiate his 10-piece cookware set from the rest of the pack.

"For certain dishes you need certain types of pans. Stainless steel isn't perfect to cook everything, nor is copper or cast iron," Boulud says. "So I wanted to do a set that mixed together all the pieces you needed: cast iron, stainless steel and copper and aluminum."

Boulud used similar logic while consulting on the design of his cutlery collection.

"I wanted to create a knife that offered the best of French, German, Japanese and American ideas," he says. "So the steel is made in Japan, but to save a little money, the knife is actually forged in China. I wanted it to be useful to the professional, but also accessible and affordable for the home consumer." A 10-piece set will range from $299 to $399.

Which isn't to say that Boulud doesn't appreciate the other end of the spectrum. He's toying with a prototype of a numbered, limited-edition knife, which he fondly calls "the Maserati of knives," but price is holding him back. "The sample costs $600," Boulud says.

Price is clearly no object for Alain Ducasse, who commissioned Goyard, the French luggage manufacturer, to create a series of eight limited-edition chef's trunks. The hand-stenciled canvas trunks feature leather trays and pockets that house everything from an olive-oil flask to a chef's jacket and tea towels. Leather straps are designed to secure Ducasse's selection of cooking utensils, including copper saucepans, Japanese knives and a marble mortar and pestle. Retail price? As the saying goes, if you have to ask, don't bother. Ducasse says each trunk will be "a one-of-a-kind work of art," which also means they're priced only upon request.

Ducasse aside, most chefs are tailoring their products for a mainstream, budget-minded consumer. A 10-piece collection of Emerilware cookware in stainless steel, for example, retails for $199. By contrast, a 10-piece set of All-Clad's signature stainless is $579. The idea is not only to reach a wider demographic but also to help demystify the idea that "chef" equals "gourmet" or "stuff I can't cook and my kids won't eat." Maybe that's why the $35.50 Bialetti Pasta Pot achieved sold-out status on QVC earlier this year, thanks to two on-air appearances by Di-Spirito. Ken O'Brien, director of merchandising for home products for QVC, says a line of products bearing DiSpirito's name is in the works for Spring 2004.

Flip the channel over to the Home Shopping Network and you'll see Wolfgang Puck touting an increasingly comprehensive Bistro kitchenware collection, from a 1-quart covered saucepan for $18.50 to a panini maker for $55. If you're wondering how influential Puck is, consider he had to convince HSN executives to produce the panini maker.

"We didn't think panini grills would sell to the general consumer," says Steve Krout, vice president of merchandising for Home Shopping Network. "We only brought it to market because Wolfgang felt so strongly about it." The grill launched in February and has been showcased twice since. Each time, it's sold out. "I can't even get one for my wife," Krout says.

Puck celebrates his fifth anniversary with HSN on Aug. 23, when he'll appear on the shopping channel for a marathon nine-hour session. Krout wouldn't reveal specifics about the limited-edition products Puck will showcase that day, saying only, "with Wolfgang, audiences are always surprised."

He isn't kidding: On a recent evening, Puck was doing a live midnight broadcast when a viewer called in, explaining that she was struggling to make a particular dish. Puck told her to tune in again at noon the following day, when he would make the dish and guide her through it on the air.

"Wolfgang loves stuff like that," Krout says. "He loves responding to his fans with such immediacy."

Did Puck's culinary gallantry also result in a sale? "Absolutely," Krout says, smiling.